A Dude, A Dog and A Dame return

Trump

Rational people watching what’s happening in the Divided States of America are rightly worried. Really worried.

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Carl Bernstein, the one-time Washington Post reporter who made his bones breaking stories on the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon, calls Trump’s appointment of Matt Whitaker as head of the Mueller investigation a Presidential coup.

George Conway, husband of Trump propagandist Kellyanne Conway and a Conservative Washington lawyer with solid Republican credentials, felt compelled to write a New York Times op-ed saying Whitaker’s appointment is unconstitutional.

Even before the Whitaker appointment, retired U.S. Airways pilot Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, who demonstrated his coolness in crisis by landing a plane with 155 passengers aboard on the Hudson River, says he has never been more worried about the future of his country.

Former CIA director John Brennan, who called Trump’s slavish performance in Helsinki treasonous, warns the nation of a looming constitutional crisis.

Michael Hayden, a much-decorated four star General and former Director of both the National Security Agency and the CIA, cautions the country about the fragility of the veneer of civilization.

Brennan and Hayden, in particular, are serious men and American patriots of the highest order who have spent their lives in the service of their country.

As has Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, the rich kid who volunteered to go to Vietnam, where he was wounded in action, and later gave up a lucrative private law practice to prosecute bad guys for a comparable pittance.

On the other side of the ledger lives the evil presence of Donald Trump, a venal conman who dodged the draft in pursuit of money, proudly avoids paying taxes, cheated students at his bogus ‘university’ and on his three wives, bullies all who oppose him, praises murderous thugs like Vladimir Putin and Rodrigo Duterte and proclaims at his frightening mob rallies that he “loves” Kim Jong Un, the unhinged psychopath who starves his people, killed his half-brother and sent an American student home in a fatal coma for pilfering a poster.

When I first began writing about Donald Trump, I did so for amusement. He seemed the perfect comic foil with his ferret-top hair, orange-tinted perma-tan and ridiculous bombast. This is a man who phoned New York media outlets pretending to be his own publicist, confiding in a laughably concealed voice that he, Donald Trump, was being pursued by all the women in New York City.

I viewed him, as so many others did, as someone to be mocked, an orange clown with bad hair and a limited vocabulary.

I’m not laughing anymore.

Trump is a malevolent, malicious, criminal. A paranoid narcissist who views the world through the narrow focus of how it affects him. He has no ideology, no beliefs outside what benefits his shallow existence. No spirituality, zero empathy. No boundaries when it comes to his own survival, even if it means appealing to the worst element in America with fearmongering and lies. Even if it means violence and death. Even if it means bringing the country down with him.

Trump is cult leader Jim Jones without the mind addling drugs. He exudes unctuousness and demands total devotion from his mesmerized and often slow-witted followers. His hypocrisy is breathtaking, his lack of shame an indication of serious mental pathology. He once agreed with shock jock Howard Stern that his daughter Ivanka was “a piece of ass.” He values loyalty, on a one-way street.

Take his treatment of Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Senator who supported him from the beginning, the first serious sitting politician to join the Trump camp. Sessions gave up his safe Senate seat for his dream job of Attorney General, in his mind a fitting reward for his loyal service.

It should be said I have no sympathy for Sessions, who stood by Trump through his rancorous campaign of bigotry and lies. If he didn’t get the measure of the man during those months of daily contact he probably wasn’t qualified for the job of highest law enforcement officer in the land. But that is beside the point when looking at Trump’s view of loyalty.

Sessions, a proud conservative extremist who was nominated for a judgeship in 1986 but not confirmed because of controversial comments on race, proved to be more of a law and order man than Trump expected. Sessions took the advice of ethics people at the Department of Justice and recused himself from the Russia investigation because of his involvement in the campaign.

As Attorney General, Sessions implemented the extreme agenda Trump needed to appeal to his frightened mouth-breathing base. But this wasn’t enough for Dear Leader, who wanted a Roy Cohen-like pit bull who would use every dirty trick available to thwart the investigation that threatened his Presidency.

When Sessions couldn’t deliver, Trump began a campaign of public humiliation to get his resignation, so he could put in place a stooge. He called him weak and questioned his manhood. Sessions stood his ground, using the bad optics of his dismissal before the midterms to keep his job.

Within hours of the polls closing, Trump made his move, ordering Chief of Staff John Kelly to do his dirty work. Sessions asked for a few days to clear up his desk. The once-respected Marine General said no.

Trump got his stooge in Matt Whitaker, the wannabe politician who auditioned for the job on CNN by laying out a scenario in which an acting AG could shut down the Mueller investigation by starving it of funds. No matter that he hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate, has a questionable past working for a Florida company that cost consumers $26 million before being shut down as a scam and is otherwise unqualified for the job.

To get to his stooge, Trump had to pass over Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Senate-confirmed Republican he picked for the job, who was next in line under the normal succession.

One wonders what it will take for the Republican Congress to wake up to the danger Trump represents. What level of debasement will he sink to before the rational people of the “self-proclaimed greatest country on earth” rise up.

Hitler was a monster disguised as a ranting clown with a bad mustache and worse hair. Kim Jong Un is an overfed fiend masquerading as a messiah in fat-concealing custom suits and cropped clown hair. Donald Trump is a diabolical brute, a schemer without conscience who cloaks his malice in grade school insults delivered from a pursed-lipped, oily orange clown face shaded under a swooping aircraft carrier comb-over of indeterminate colour.

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Last week started with the President of the United States covering up the murder of ajournalist andU.S. resident by a Middle East money lender who is Crown Prince Jared Kushner’s BFF, progressedthrougha nationwide bomb scare that threatened the lives of two past Presidents, among other high-profileTrump critics,and ended with mass murder in a place of worship in Mr. Rogers upscale Pittsburgh neighborhood.

The worried world watches and waits, wondering if Trump’s heavily armed deplorables will easily surrender their moment in the spotlight or if the Dear Leaderand his plethora of bootlickers will inspire bloody insurrection from the mentally unhinged fringe element if the election doesn’t go their way. .

The self-proclaimed “greatest country in the world” is a boiling cauldron of hatred ready to bubble overinto post-election violence that couldengulf the countryand impact the entire globe.

Few objective observers expect anything less from this malignant narcissist? But what about the supporting castofsanctimonious sycophants, religious wingnuts and faux patriots who masqueradetheir cowardicein the folds of the flag.

Presumably unencumbered by mental illness,regularCNN Trump enablers like Rick Santorum, Steve Cortes, Alice Stewart and Scott Jennings, among many others, twist themselves into human pretzels denying the obvious unfitness of theirchoice for the highest office in the land. They cluck about entertainer Trump versus presidential Trump, separating the toxicity of his venom andevilclown antics emanating from the Oval Office as if he were a toddler going through the terrible twos.

They justify their advocacy by citing supposed successes, most notably the seating of two ultra conservative judges to the Supreme Court.The plain politically incorrect truth is that a monkey could put his finger on the list provided by the Federalist Society and get his picks through a Senate top-loaded with tree-swingers.

The much-vaunted tax reduction for the rich, the only significant legislation passed by a Congress and Executive Branch dominated by Republicans, is so unpopular GOP candidates aren’t talking about it in the run up to the midterms, instead preferring to vilify a caravan of poor people a thousand miles and weeks of walking away from America.

Family values stalwart and Republican operativeStewart, a crucifix prominent on her throat most nights, admitsto being dismayedby the pussy grabbing tape, porn star and Playboy bunny payoffs, philandering andsexual assault accusationsbut rationalizes voting for Trump because he appointed Supreme Court judges who might overturn a woman’s right to control her own body.

Failed Presidential candidate Santorum, ever focused on futureopportunities, smiles slyly to himself while mildly disavowingthe most egregious Trumpbehavior, careful not to alienate the deplorable base key to his political ambition.

Jennings, the ‘aw shucks’ moderate,assuages his conscience and puts on a good guy face for his kids bydisagreeing withthe most offensive Trump methodology while supporting the man endangering the democracy they will inherit.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Leader Paul Ryan and their respective gangs of mouth-breathers, climate change deniers,religious ravers and NRA lap dogs have chosen to be on the wrong side of history for political expediency, implications for the future of the country be damned.

Evangelical scions like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham, intent on their mission to preserve the power and riches bestowed upon them by their earthlyfathers, will presumably answer fortheir self-serving actions when they meet their Maker. Meanwhile, their followers will have some explaining to do at the Final Judgement for eschewing the biblical values they exalt in favour of an agenda carried out by a demented orange emissary of the dark underworld.

The Murdoch family and the right wing mercenaries at Fox News betray the viewers who support their privileged lifestyle by spewing venomous conspiracy theories and pumping out fake news 24/7 while Dear Leader demeans real journalists.

Oblivious to the havoc he reeks, Donald Trump stumps the country spewing poisonous rancor against all who oppose him, ingraining his invectives in the sick minds of violent fringe players like accused bomber CesarSayoc,seen chanting CNN sucks at Trump’s frightening mob rallies, and Robert Bowers, who adopted Trumpian tropes by calling immigrants “invaders” and lamenting that Jews are “infesting” America before carrying out his murderous rampage.

Historians may recognize the Dear Leader’s mentalillnessas a mitigating factor for the damage he has done. Not so for the ‘sane’people he relies upon for support.

AllTrump enablersare culpable in the carnage endangering their democracy.All of them have blood on their hands.

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Until my mid-teens I bought everything America was selling. I swallowed brand USA with the naivete and fervor of a Trump University sucker.

I watched the westerns with chisel-jawed heroes like Randolph Scott and John Wayne fighting bad guys and blood-thirsty Indians. I idolized actor Audie Murphy who overcame his thespian shortcomings because audiences knew the decorated World War II veteran had the real life chops to play heroes.

Back before the Me Too Movement, I laughed as Bob Hope delivered scantily clad show girls and double entendres to American service men protecting the world from communists in lonely far away outposts.

I looked up to your Presidents. I particularly liked Kennedy, the good Catholic family man whose philandering went unreported, when he faced down the tyrant Khrushchev. In my youthful mind U.S. Presidents represented a country with principles, a country that stood up to tyranny, no matter the cost, to keep us all safe.

The truth is, I wanted to be an American, not a polite Canadian with second rate celebrities, earnest heroes and boring politicians.

Then I grew up. Or at least expanded intellectually.

The illusion of America the Great, did not shatter immediately, smashed upon a sharp rock of reality. It peeled away, layer by layer, as historical truths gleaned from a lifetime of reading and travel began to sink in.

In this era of alternate facts and truth isn’t truth, here are a few myth shattering irrefutable facts easily verified on Google:

The Constitution Americans so revere was formulated by bigoted white men who viewed the concept of liberty through the toilet paper tube view of race. The liberty they envisioned did not include black people who slaved on their plantations, yellow people who died at back breaking labour for meager pay or red people whose lands were usurped in a cultural genocide that would eventually be given the highfalutin name of Manifest Destiny.

The United States is not a true democracy in which the majority rules. Money is the determining factor in getting elected. Lots of money. Even then the Presidential candidate who gets the most votes doesn’t always win, as evidenced by two of the last three Presidents. The Electoral College system was created to appease slave states. It is so complicated and antiquated most Americans could not tell you how it works, or why. The Senate is a smoke and mirrors democratic institution: in choosing a Supreme Court Justice who will determine the country’s direction for decades, a representative from Wyoming who might represent a couple hundred thousand voters carries the exact same weight as a Senator from California who represents 20 million constituents.

The U.S. is not a country in which no man is above the law. As if he were a Medieval monarch, the President retains the absolute power to pardon anyone of any crime, be it friend, family member or accomplice. It is an open question among constitutional scholars whether a President can pardon himself. Enough said.

The United States is not the land of the free. In America, incarcerating its own people is big business. The U.S. imprisons more of its citizens than any country in the world. It’s not even close.

The Supreme Court is not an impartial body above politics. This is a claim stunning in its brazenness, given the disgraceful nominating process the world just witnessed. Justices are appointed by the politicians in charge on the basis of their ideology. Period.

The U.S. is not the greatest country in the world, a place where all the rest of us want to live. It is a country that spends more on its military than the next five countries combined while its infrastructure crumbles and Americans die because they can’t afford health care. Once great cities like Detroit have been reduced to Third World dereliction. Chicago is a war zone. No one wants to move to Flint and drink toxic water or go to Puerto Rico to sit in the dark. It is a scary country whose heavily armed citizens are killing each other in nightclubs and movie theatres, restaurants and parks, churches and schools in record shattering numbers. The majority of the non-desperate world citizens prefer to live in stable countries and many no longer want to visit the States.

The U.S. has never been the shining city on the hill, a beacon of integrity for all the world to see. It is a country that has always put its own interests first regardless of morality. It has pillaged the world’s resources, never putting a dollar into a Third World country without the expectation of getting two out. The feigned indignation expressed by Lindsay Graham at the Saudis for killing a journalist, the same red-faced sputterings he unleashed at the “non-political” Kavanaugh hearings, would make for great satire if the subject matter wasn’t so horrifying. As Graham well knows, the U.S. has a long sordid history of propping up murderous tyrants, from Anastasia Somoza in Nicaragua to the Shah of Iran, from Saddam Hussein to Manual Noriega in Panama, until the latter’s blatant drug dealing became too public. America threw in with corrupt Vietnamese generals while dropping bombs, napalm and Agent Orange on people fighting for the right to determine their own country’s fate. All in the name of their own national interests. Meanwhile Graham’s new BFF is cozying up to the current generation of tyrants, professing love for the North Korean thug who had his half-brother killed in a Singapore airport and returned the broken body of a barely alive U.S. student who pilfered a poster. The hypocritical Graham will no doubt eventually fall in line with U.S. leaders who are blatantly providing a cover story for a repressive tyrant who murdered a U.S.-based journalist then cut up his body.

Perhaps the greatest myth of all is inherent in the country’s name. The United States of America is anything but united. The plain-spoken, politically incorrect fact that nobody on network or cable television wants to say out loud is that the U.S. comprises a society in which a significant portion of its populace has deplorable values. There can be no other explanation for Donald Trump, who is a symptom not the cause of the country’s spiritual sickness. Hillary had it right. Trump supporters are deplorable. They laugh uproariously when their Dear Leader mocks a disabled person or sexual assault victim. They chant “Lock her up!” when he chastises a political opponent and then nod reverently when he tells them accused sexual predators are innocent until proven guilty. Trump supporters are the “very fine people” who marched with tiki torches and killed a woman in Charlottesville. They profess their love of Jesus and family values while supporting a man who cheats on his wife with porn stars, lies pathologically and admits to grabbing women by their private parts, a guy who bullies the weak but barely stops short of oral sex for strongmen like Putin. They cluck when he takes babies and young children from their mother’s arms but take secret comfort in the fact desperate foreigners will soon have to climb over a 30-foot wall to get into the country. They give fealty to a man who drapes himself in the flag but avoided military service when his country called. They say America First but support a tax cheat who always put himself before his country. Deplorable is as deplorable does.

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One of the most frequently asked question among viewers of Trumpland, the greatest reality show in the history of television, is what motivates the people who defend its star.

It makes sense that sleazebags like Sean Hannity are in it for the money, as are the paid sycophants who debase themselves daily. But why do career politicians, successful business people and even military generals, all of whom already have money and status, sacrifice their reputations and legacies for a malignant, mentally unhinged, mango megalomaniac?

I have no answer except that Donald Trump is the most compelling television villain of all time. And that includes fictional soap operas like Dynasty and Dallas. J.R. couldn’t shine Trump’s loafers when it comes to duplicity and far-reaching malevolence. Forget about bankrupting rival tycoons and debauching socialites, Trump has the stature and capacity to corrupt and degrade on a global level. Not to mention his uncanny ability to metastasize his malignancy to any seemingly respectable person who enters his orbit.

Even given his ‘genius’ for entangling others in his web of nastiness, he couldn’t carry the 24/7 show himself. His backup cast is to die for.

Trump flaunts his Barbie trophy-wife on his arm like an over-the-top diamond-encrusted designer watch; his favored daughter is a callow, conspicuous consumer of her own tacky Made-in-China fashions; his shallow sons, emasculated and greasy, do their father’s dirty dealing on command; his falsetto-voiced, skinny-suited son-in-law, who absorbed the art of murky financial dealings on the knee of his felonious father, exudes the precise amount of limp-wristed ineptitude to make him seem truly sinister.

And that’s just the immediate family, all of whom might be indicted in future episodes, except perhaps for Melania, who cannot be prosecuted for taking up the oldest profession in the Biblical books.

Trumpland viewers are treated to a congo line of cowardly Republicans who dance to his frenetically crazy tune as if they are monkeys performing for a mad orange organ grinder.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, the devout Catholic who weekly demonstrates a miracle to his fellow Church congregants by walking upright to his pew without a spine, has attached himself to a thrice-married philanderer and admitted sexual predator with the devotion of a prepubescent altar boy to the Virgin Mary. Great role model for the teens in the parish Catholic Youth Organization, Paul.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the turtle-like political schemer and ultimate swamp creature, emerges from his jowls intermittently to croak positively about a President he loathes, before retreating into the folds of skin in silent acquiescence as his Republican lawmakers trash patriotic Americans serving in the FBI and intelligence communities.

General Michael Flynn gave up a life of fancy dinners with dicey foreign leaders and all-expense paid travel abroad to throw his three-star respectability into Trump’s collection basket of half-baked buns. He began his association with the Evil Orange Clown by transmogrifying his military bearing into mouth-frothing shouts of ‘Lock Her UP’ and will likely end the relationship behind bars whimpering ‘Let Me Out’.

Sean Spicer, who before meeting Trump had carved out a respectable career as a slightly bent spoke in the GOP propaganda wheel, threw his future job prospects to the winds of political expediency by publicly blowing his boss with the “yours is bigger than his” pronouncement at his first official press conference.

Reince Priebus, the weak-kneed lifelong Republican hack, emerged from the shadowy obscurity of dim GOP backrooms to fizzle out under the relentless glare of the Trump sun, his big boy political pants sagging above the crack of his ass as he shuffled off to search out a book agent.

Steve Bannon, the messy Machiavellian menace behind Trump’s rise to Conman-in-Chief, rose from the White Nationalist bully pulpit that is Breitbart News to a White House desk within slobbering distance of the Oval Office. He put in 18-hour days pulling his political puppet’s strings with a mix of feigned fealty and obsequiousness only to find himself back at Breitbart when he ran afoul of the kids, and is now scanning the job classifieds with Reince, Sean and Michael. Job hunting tips for Sloppy Steve—get a haircut, wash your face, shave and camouflage that overflowing belly with an untucked shirt.

Attorney General Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions, the Evil Elf of Alabama, swallowed his southern pride and took shelter under the nearest toadstool as the boss heaped insult and humiliation upon him for the Russia recusal. He held his low ground to do the important work of harassing ‘bad people’ who smoke pot but eventually forfeited his elfin manhood in entirety by acceding to the boss’s demand to go after the Clintons and find dirt on the director of the FBI. Where does an evil elf go when the kingdom collapses?

Anthony Scaramucci, media pundit, businessman, financier, opportunist and human pinky ring, sold his profitable company to serve a man whose venality he came to idolize only after he won the Presidency. The Mooch swaggered into the media spotlight and unashamedly put his lips to the boss’s ample ass at his first press conference with flattery that went so far beyond the pale that even casual observers were left blushing. It was all for naught as the Mooch found himself muttering profanely at the unemployment agency even before officially undertaking his new White House job.

Secretary of Health Tom Price, the good doctor of the stock market swindle, graduated from allegations of insider trading while serving in the Senate to fraudulent use of government airplanes for personal business during a brief stay in the Cabinet. His political career crash-landed when the boss uttered the words that gave him a woody watching The Apprentice—”You’re fired.”

Sweet talking southern belle Sarah Huckabee Sanders perfected the art of man-flattering and lying with straight-faced innocence, but likely won’t be up for the part of Scarlet in any remake of Gone with the Wind. She doesn’t seem like Rhett Butler’s type.

The one person in Trumpland who may have a future after impeachment is Stephen Miller, the dead-eyed Trump defender whose occasional emergence from his White House lair to do Sunday talk shows, scares the bejesus out of Liberals and even centrist Republicans. Miller might not have much of a future in drafting bills or writing speeches, but he’ll never be out of work as long as Hollywood is making movies with evil Nazi characters.

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The Conman-in-Chief’s latest encounter with Vladimir Putin makes it clear to all but the most obtuse observer that the bloviating blowhard is scared spit-less of the Russian gangster.

Gathered with world leaders for a photo op dressed in a blue silk smock hanging to mid-thigh that violently clashed with his orangeness, looking like an aging overweight hairstylist with a fondness for excessive hair product, Trump turned to the similarly attired little murderous macho man, flashed his best salesman smile and extended a tiny hand.

The resulting grasp exhibited none of the prolonged awkwardness shown with previous world leaders. No grip and yank to show dominance. Just a brief limp-wristed clasp to set the tone for what was to come.

With all things Russian dominating the domestic political stage, the tough-talking, trumpet blaster did not deem it expedient to have a mano-a-mano sit-down with the thug his intelligence agencies say interfered with America’s most sacred democratic institution.

Instead he asked Vlad politely during a brief aside whether the ‘rumours’ he was hearing about election interference were true.

“Nyet,” replied Vlad, apparently showing some annoyance at the trumpet-blaster’s temerity. “Is plot by political foes to ruin great relationship.”

Unspoken, except perhaps by an imperceptible digging in of Vlad’s blood-stained fingernails into the flesh of a tiny hand, or maybe the subtle twitch of a killer’s eye, was the pee tape and money laundering documentation Vlad has squirreled away in the Kremlin for just the right moment.

How else to explain Trump’s take-away from their encounter.

“I asked him again about election interference and he said no. How many times can you ask someone.”

And with that, the commander of the greatest military force the world has ever known, a man who thrives on his perceived toughness, who feigns patriotism for political expediency, who pulls no punches when dealing with adversaries like Rosie O’Donnell, Nordstrom’s, grieving Gold Star families, female network anchors, NFL players and even his own Republican colleagues, one of whom has terminal brain cancer, throws his entire intelligence community under the military bus.

“I believe him,” he said meekly.

After all, why would Vlad lie about something like that. Especially to his new best bro.

For all his shallowness, intellectual deficiency, pettiness and plain out ignorance, no one can deny the Apricot-tinted Conman’s cunning and incredible survival instincts.

Ask yourself why a man facing the pressure of a massive investigation into all things Russia would publicly take the word of his country’s number one enemy, a Russian tyrant who murders his political enemies, over the documented findings of Americans who risk their lives gathering the information in service of their country.

It’s a head-scratcher.

My guess is, money laundering and other financial crimes aside, it dates back to the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas in 2013. According to an account pop-singing Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov gave to a Russian news outlet, as reported in Politico, he met Trump in the lobby of his Las Vegas hotel and developed an instant camaraderie.

“He took me around the shoulder, gave a thumb’s up, saying ‘Everything is cool!’” Agalarov remembered of the Trump Hotel meeting. Later, as the two watched the pageant, Trump regaled Agalarov with his philosophy on prenuptial agreements and gossiped about VIPs in the audience, per the Russian’s account.

In light of the Access Hollywood tape, who could doubt that with the country’s most beautiful women parading on stage, that the conversation with the Russian pop star turned to “boy talk.”

Investigators looking into the existence of the pee tape video are looking in the wrong place. The encounter may not have taken place in Russia, where Trump’s spidey senses would have been on full alert, but instead in a penthouse in the desert, where Trump would have felt safe getting a golden shower. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, except when Russian spies are involved.

That explains the testimony to Congress of Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller, who recently told U.S. lawmakers that someone in the Agalarov entourage offered to send five women to Trump’s room during a trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. Schiller says he declined the offer on Trump’s behalf.

Agalarov likely knew the Old Orange Groper had a predilection for doing naughty things with beautiful women from the Viagra-fueled partying they did in Vegas. Like a good host, he wanted to return the favour, Moscow-style, with secret cameras rolling.

From the loyal Schiller’s testimony under oath, we don’t know whether Trump dropped his guard and succumbed to his libidinal yearnings in a far away land. The long-time bodyguard said Trump laughed when he told him about the offer. He said he stood at Trump’s door for several moments but could not testify as to what might have occurred after he left.

Given Trump’s taped admission that he can’t stop himself from kissing women, welcome or not, and his affinity for grabbing them by the pussy, it doesn’t take James Bond to figure out what the Russians might have on the Old Orange Groper.

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The rational among you may have noticed your ‘businessman’ President has made a few suspect hires. The Mango Megalomaniac’s first 200 days in the Oval Office would have got him fired from The Apprentice for appalling judgement, as illustrated by a multitude of the shortest political tenures in U.S. history.

The record setting string began with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, the shortest serving NSA ever, fired after less than a month for lying to the Vice President about his contact with the Russians.

A record that will go down in history steeped in Turkish coffee, slathered in Russian salad dressing and surrounded by the stale pizza crusts left over from conspiracy theories propagated by his son.

Then came Press Secretary Sean Spicer, fired after six months for not lying convincingly enough for the President. And because he wore ill-fitting suits, had a sparser comb-over than the boss and exhibited a limited command of English.

Spicey’s record for ruining a reputation began with his emphatic and pictorially disprovable lie about the inaugural crowd during his first five minutes on the job.

The man the President hired to take Spicer’s place came to work with fire in his eye vowing to quell White House dissension through a scorched earth policy. Instead, Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci, who arrived on the press briefing scene blowing kisses and exuding an overabundance of love for the President, scorched the air waves in a profane tirade and was perp-walked off the White House grounds, his sorry ass singed and fired after 10 days. He had not yet officially assumed his duties.

The man who personified a human pinky ring holds a record for bad Presidential judgement that may never be broken,

Next came your President’s pick for the critically important post of White House Chief of Staff. The ineffectual and weak-kneed Reince Priebus, a devout Christian who declared at a banana republic cabinet ‘love-in’ that serving Trump was a blessing, was dumped like an odorous expulsion from the Narcissist-in-Chief’s dimpled fat ass.

A record in stinking up a political blessing that makes the Washington swamp smell sweet in comparison.

The latest on the list, the White House’s first political Advisor on White Supremacy, Steve Bannon, was banished back to bloviating for Brietbart, voice of the Alt Right, where he vows to wage war against anyone who tries to deflect the Infant-in-Chief from Bannon’s stated mission of figuratively blowing up the country’s institutions.

This is a record with an ominous asterisk, since the position of Advisor on White Supremacy is unique to this administration.

Consider this, denizens of Trumpland, your Reality TV hero also set a real-life firing record by becoming the first President in U.S. history to fire an FBI director who was investigating his administration. Unlike his flinty-eyed TV alter ego who cut his minions loose by staring them down across the table in a corporate boardroom, your Chicken-In-Chief sent an underling to the director’s office with a mealy-mouthed letter when he was out of town. The FBI director with a long record of public service learned about the firing on CNN.

It is understandable that those of you who first fell under the Trumpeter-in-Chief’s spell during his Reality TV days might not be overly concerned by the spate of firings. After all, most of you tuned in each week, side by each on the couch, or on matching recliners, with quivering thighs or the sexual tingling of an oncoming woody, in anticipation of hearing your hero utter his signature phrase.

If only life in America could be that great again.

The trouble is your choice to lead isn’t content with firing people. He wants to torture them too. Good people like Jeff Sessions. Your Disloyalist-in-Chief denigrated then publicly humiliated his personal pick for the highest law office in the land, hoping to goad him into resigning so he could then arrange to fire the special prosecutor investigating him for obstruction of justice and other crimes and misdemeanors.

Remember, Jeff is your guy, the first senator to endorse the man you embraced as your Commander-in-Chief. Sessions is cracking down on Dreamers and the immigrant families who are taking your jobs in the cabbage patch. He wants to ban Muslims and stop the funding to sanctuary cities. He may look like an Evil Elf but he’s claims to be a Christian who wants to expand your country’s world-leading prison industry by locking up more Americans for longer terms. He knows in his heart that people who smoke pot are bad. He stands for confederate statues and prosecuting bad people on both sides of the neo-Nazi, White Supremacy, KKK melees.

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“Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle merite.” (“Every nation has the government it deserves.”) –Joseph de Maistre, 1811.

Lawyer and philosopher Joseph de Maistre, a loyal subject of the King of Sardinia, was advocating for hereditary monarchy when he coined the phrase that became popular in the 20th century in a slightly altered version: “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.”

De Maistre, appalled by the violence and disorder that followed the French Revolution of 1789, favoured governments founded on a Christian constitution. As a Catholic and proponent of hierarchical authority, he supported the papacy’s hold on European monarchs.

However misguided his intention may appear through the lens of history, his words were never truer than in America in the time of the Mango Megalomaniac.

Out of a population in excess of 300 million, Americans chose as their Commander-in-Chief a pathological liar, a shallow, ignorant, thin-skinned bully, a con man who worships money above all else, a self-serving tax evader who avoided military service when his country called, a misogynist bigot, a mentally ill unstable opportunist. And they did so with their eyes wide open.

Donald Trump’s shortcomings have been on public display for five decades. His philandering, his bankruptcies, his stiffing of contractors and working people, his tacky taste and shallowness, his lying and conning (remember his election campaign vow to never settle the lawsuits over his bogus “university” scam), all played out in the media spotlight. He admitted to grabbing women by the pussy and called Mexicans rapists. He denigrated an American war hero for getting captured in the conflict he so deftly avoided and railed against a Gold Star family whose son gave his life for the country. He said it was smart not to pay taxes and called the political system that would eventually elect him rigged.

Knowing all this, Americans elected him as their President.

This should not have come as a surprise to the rest of the world.

The historical facts run contrary to the ‘alternative’ facts Americans ballyhoo while laying claim to being the greatest country in the world. America is a war-like nation founded on slavery and genocide. Conflict and violence have been its lifeblood, as evidenced by the ubiquitous war memorials in its capital. It maintains its standing in the world through military force.

The U.S. perceives its national interests extending into every corner of the globe. It is a country that sees enemies everywhere. The long list of direct armed conflict, meddling and fighting by proxy includes Britain, Canada, Spain, Mexico, Vietnam, Germany, Japan, Chile, Libya, China, Korea, the Soviet Union, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and even tiny Grenada, among many others.

When deemed to be in its national interests the U.S. government has supported despots like Sadam Hussein and the Shaw of Iran, supplied arms to mujahedeen fighters like Osama bin Laden and helped in the overthrow of democratically elected leaders like Chile’s Salvador Allende and Patrice Lumumba, the first elected Congolese Prime Minister, who was murdered with U.S. approval.

To deflect from investigations that could implode his Presidency, the beleaguered Bloviator-in-Chief ‘wags the dog’ by threatening to wage nuclear war against America’s old nemesis and newest arch enemy, North Korea, for wanting to arm itself against what it perceives as an imminent American threat.

Rest easy. Unprovoked, North Korea won’t be insuring its certain destruction by launching nuclear-armed missiles at the United States or its allies.

Like the Romans and other empires before them, what Americans fail to grasp is that the real enemy is the rot within. Military power aside, the U.S. is a country that’s world standing has peaked. It has been spiralling downward for decades while the top 10 percent get richer and the bottom 90 percent get disillusioned and increasingly bitter.

This so-called bastion of freedom imprisons more of its citizens than any other country, exceeding second place China by more than half a million inmates even though that country has a billion more people. Tens of thousands of Americans are shooting themselves or each other every year. Mass shootings are so common the national news media only focus on exceptional cases involving children, terrorism or racial motivation. Terrified police officers shoot motorists for reaching for a driver’s licence. An estimated 150 Americans overdose on opioid drugs every day.

American companies, with the First Family at the forefront, set up shop outside the country to increase profits on the backs of cheap foreign labour while companies that can’t pick up and move import foreign workers to do jobs they say Americans are too proud, lazy or soft to do.

More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. It is the only developed country that does not offer its citizens health care as a right. The United States is one of only three countries worldwide to opt out of the Paris Climate Accord.

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Harken back to the good old days of 2016, when the man you selected as your leader and role model for the nation’s youth, was caught bragging about grabbing pussy (boy talk, as wife Melania explained). Back then he knew more about fighting terror than the generals and was smarter than the intelligence community and everyone else on all other matters and was the only person who could solve the nation’s many problems.

He told you so and you took him at his word.

Double-dealing Donald was your saviour back in the day, someone who would pull the plug on the Washington swamp and get all those slimy politicians slithering in a political conga line with a magical wave of his tiny hands. A man who would make you feel great again, bring you back to the glory days of your grand delusions.

You knew it was true because he was a rich guy you’d watched pretend to fire people on television. You saw his name on buildings and on the airplane that took him to rallies with his trophy wife and Miami Vice sons Eric and Don Jr. and beautiful daughter Ivanka. You laughed with the naughty old orange philanderer when you heard he agreed with shock jock Howard Stern’s assessment of his daughter as “a piece of ass.”

That happened before he found God, the Christians among you rationalized.

And as a bonus voters got his genius son-in-law Jared Kushner, someone who would overcome the Kushner family criminal stigma by brokering peace in the Middle East while simultaneously revamping the U.S. government and conducting diplomacy with Mexico, Canada and China. All while wearing a thousand dollar skinny suit with no cape attached.

What a great family, you said to yourselves, so accomplished at making money and avoiding taxes. Great kids with their collective eyes on the bottom line. You couldn’t wait for them to get into the White House and apply the skills they learned shilling for Daddy while your kids were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. You assumed the boys must have learned a lot about business while conning shady developers into buying the family name at inflated prices. Many of you purchased Ivanka’s tacky Chinese sweat shop fashion accessories to wear to the Make America Great Again rallies.

You watched the great man walking imperiously down the steps of his personal airplane, his tie hanging below his crotch like a red codpiece, trophy wife in her proper position behind, and listened rapturously on the tarmac imagining he would make your sad lives more gilt-edged, empty and vacuous, just like his.

It was basically the same pitch he gave to the suckers who attended his bogus university: “Trust me and you can have what I’ve got.” Of course, that was before he settled the law suit, the one being unfairly overseen by a biased Mexican judge, and gave the swindled students their money back.

There will be no refunds for Trump voters. Only a bad case of buyer’s remorse and a sick feeling that will be deemed a pre-existing condition and won’t be covered by your health insurance. That is if you are able to get health insurance.

Health care seemed easy before the election. “It will be so great, and cheaper, too,” said your apricot-flavoured conman, neglecting to mention the fine print that says it will only be cheaper if you and your family don’t get sick. But cheer up, the health bill is mired in the undrained political swamp that is the U.S. Senate and might not make it back to the Congressional slough before the impeachment.

Who knew health care could be so complicated?

Remember when the honest-talking billionaire told you it would be a disaster to elect Crooked Hillary and have the office of the President mired in an FBI investigation over improper use of e-mails. And how his trusted campaign confidant and future National Security Advisor Michael Flynn led you all in a rousing chorus of Lock Her Up.

Such good fun in 2016. Looking back, the e-mail scandal seems so quaint and innocent as your conman’s Presidency, minus the disgraced Flynn, reels under four separate investigations, including the Senate, Congress, the FBI and a special prosecutor looking for crimes like treason, perjury and obstruction of justice.

Then there’s the wall. Remember what great fun it was to shout “Build the Wall” with all your fellow bigots at those great rallies. And to chant “Mexico!” with hatred in your heart when the Mango Megalomaniac pursed his pussy lips and asked who was going to pay for it. Some of you may remember getting a woody.

Turns out you’re going to be paying for pricey repairs to an ugly fence because those stingy Republicans won’t give their own President billions of taxpayer dollars for a border solution more suited to medieval China than the 21st Century. Guess it was hard to read that fine print all slathered up under the brims of your Trump ball caps with the little guy below imitating a banana in your pocket.

Fighting domestic terrorism was easy, too, way back on the campaign trail. All your conman had to do was ban all those pesky Muslims from coming into the country with a flourish of his Super Souvenir Executive Order Trump Pen, available after the impeachment for $19.99 on the Shopping Network. What a great gift for Uncle Billy Bob’s Klan induction anniversary party. Except, this time the fine print was written in the U.S. Constitution, a wordy document none of you could be expected to have read but one the country’s “so-called judges” hold dear.

Turns out the orange tax-avoider you chose to bring fiscal responsibility to government is anything but stingy with your money when it comes to playing golf and promoting his various properties. It’s costing you more than a million dollars a round for Trump to play his courses with other rich guys. Try not to dwell on it when you buy discount golf balls at Walmart.

Then there’s the huge expense of protecting the slicked-back sons as they traipse around the world at Daddy’s behest. Not to mention the three million a month you’re paying because your hero’s trophy wife doesn’t want to share a town, let alone a roof and bedroom, with a fat-assed senior whose greasy hair hangs down to his shoulder on one side in the morning.

Tax cuts and infrastructure spending? Senior Republicans are already calling the White House’s proposed budget dead on arrival and the country is headed for a fiscal crisis in September when the temporary spending extension runs out.

Turns out those Muslims aren’t so bad if they stay in their own countries. Salesman Donnie sold the Saudis a lot of heavy duty weapons on his first foreign trip, even though a lot of Saudi money has been funnelled to terrorists and Saudis were front and centre in the 9/11 attack. Minor concerns to the man who paid someone to write The Art of the Deal. After the apricot-arsehole’s recent roadie, you have to worry about staying friendly with the NATO allies he pissed off with his boorish behaviour in Brussels.

Not to worry, he’s already got new allies in Syria and Nicaragua, the only two countries on the entire planet not to sign the Paris Accord. Unfortunately, the rest of the world’s leaders are collectively shaking their heads in disbelief at your man playing politics by putting an ill-advised campaign promise ahead of the future of the world’s children. All you coal miners out there can assure your kids they might get a shot at black lung disease if they drop out of school before the planet burns up..

But you can take some pride in the accomplishments in the first four months of your man Donald’s reign. He sent his lap dog Mike Pence down to the Senate to ensure the appointment of a supreme court judge. Course, a monkey could have got his pick through a Senate dominated by tree swingers.

But even Trump’s biggest critics have to admit it takes a world class ignoramus to piss off the Pope.

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Perhaps the most frequently asked question by rational viewers of Trumpland, the sleaziest Reality TV show in the genre’s sordid history, is why do they do it.

Why do seemingly normal people demean themselves in defense of an ignorant, bullying braggart? Why do they put their reputations on the line for a shallow conman who has spent his life enriching himself at others’ expense?

Take H.R. McMaster, the latest casualty in a long list of Trump supporters and sycophants who have stepped in front of the camera to take one for the Mango Megalomaniac. A hero of the Gulf War, McMaster, then a captain, lead a tank attack on a numerically superior Republican Guard force destroying the enemy without losing a single tank. He was awarded a Silver Star and rose rapidly through American military ranks, writing a book, Dereliction of Duty, criticizing American military leadership for its role in the Viet Nam War and earning a PhD in American history along the way. In 2014, Time Magazine listed the now Brigadier General as one of the most 100 influential people in the world.

Fast forward to his press appearance in front of the White House after his new boss, while bragging to the Russians in the Oval Office the day after he fired the FBI director investigating him, revealed highly classified information that put the lives of a U.S. ally’s intelligence operatives in jeopardy. Standing before the cameras in a tightly tailored suit unbecoming a man in charge of the nation’s national security, McMaster called the Washington Post story outlining Trump’s gaff categorically false before turning on his heel and marching back into the White House without answering questions.

The next day, no longer able to dispute the veracity of the report, McMaster was back before the cameras ‘walking back’ his previous assertion by saying the story’s intent was wrong. Using weasel words better suited to a political hack than a respected general, McMaster maintained everything Trump said was “wholly appropriate” to the conversation at hand.

Wholly appropriate?

We later learned, thanks to a patriotic leaker in the intelligence community, that in addition to giving sensitive intelligence to the Russians, Trump told the enemy his real reason for firing the FBI director. He called James Comey, a respected public servant who eschewed a lucrative private law career to faithfully serve his country for more than three decades, a “nut job” and said his firing would take pressure off the investigation into Russian interference, an investigation in which his Oval Office guests were front and center.

This went down as Trump lapdog Mike Pence and other minions were scurrying about making fools of themselves lying to the American people, insisting Comey was fired on the recommendation of the Deputy Attorney General. Unless Pence was lying, the Russians knew the real reason for the firing before the Vice President of the United States.

Most recently, McMaster was back on television reacting to the Washington Post story that Jared Kushner and McMaster’s disgraced predecessor Michael Flynn had met with Trump’s Oval Office guest, Russian Ambassador and spymaster Sergey Kyslyak, to discuss opening a back channel to the Kremlin that could circumvent American intelligence.

Nothing unusual about this, said McMaster with a straight face, adding that governments routinely try to establish back channels to foreign governments. Trouble is, the secret meeting took place in Trump Tower during the transition, when neither Flynn nor Kushner were part of the American government.

It doesn’t take a PhD to understand that it isn’t business as usual when two subjects of an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. election are meeting with Russia’s top spy to arrange communications that will be known only to them. Think about it: Flynn, who Trump fired but continues to promote as a good guy, lost his job for lying to the Vice President about his communications with the Russians. Kushner only admitted to the meeting after being outed by the press. McMaster would have us believe we’re supposed to trust these guys.

Learned war hero General McMaster, you are sinking into the orange goop dripping from Trump’s sweating face, joining good Catholic Sean Spicer, gurgling in the muck of Trump’s toxic swamp.

But perhaps more troubling for America’s future than power hungry bootlickers doing a morally bankrupt narcissist’s dirty work to the detriment of their country, is the inescapable fact that 37 per cent of Americans still believe Trump is doing a good job.

How can this be, sensible people the world over ask themselves as they watch the hypocrite who famously evaded the draft during the Viet Nam war, not out of concience but to pursue money, lay wreaths and spout clichés during Memorial Day ceremonies? The answer is as uncomplicated as the head space of the hundreds of people who willingly went to their deaths in the service of another megalomaniac in Jonestown. Tens of millions of Trump supporters are drinking the Kool-Aid in great suicidal gulps, which doesn’t auger well for the world’s oldest democracy.

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I lost interest in commenting on American politics about midway through the Mango Megalomaniac’s chaotic first hundred days in office.

Keeping up with the daily deluge of inanities, obfuscations and shameless lies spewing like poisonous gas from the capital of the world’s oldest democracy did not seem a good use of time that could otherwise be devoted to gardening, golf and observing the birds at my backyard feeder.

Who needs the elevated blood pressure and headaches that go with an evening of couch fuming while Trump’s sycophants publicly demean themselves in the service of a self-absorbed, pathological liar, a shallow, philandering, ignoramus who brags about grabbing pussy.

It is blatantly obvious that the man they laud for valuing loyalty would throw any and all of them under the bus and then hunch over the steering wheel and happily drive back and forth over their bloodied corpses if their opinions should ever conflict with his own.

For a former altar boy, watching the good Catholic Paul Ryan grovel at the feet of someone who is anathema to everything his faith professes is to relive the disillusionment of watching Sunday morning hypocrites take the sacred sacrament in known states of mortal sin.

Paul, your sins aren’t forgiven in the confessional if you have no intention of correcting the behaviour when you leave that small, dark, solemn box. Say 10 Hail Marys, button up your big boy cassock and start living the tenets of your faith.

With more than 1,000 days yet to unfold in an administration that tops itself daily with displays of incompetence that have turned the U.S. into the butt of the world’s most dangerous joke, I suffered from a case of early onset Trump Fatigue.

Having repeatedly chastised Trump voters for putting the world in jeopardy by electing a bloviating orange blowhard to the country’s highest office, I watched from the safety of psychological distance as the old, white, Washington swamp creatures slithered in celebration after taking away health coverage from the country’s most vulnerable citizens so the moneyed class can pay less tax.

I wanted to Tweet in all caps so Trump voters would understand: BOTTOM LINE BILLIONAIRES DO NOT HAVE YOUR BEST INTERESTS AT HEART. THESE ARE BAD (SICK) PEOPLE.

I refrained from commenting when Trump experienced an epiphany of biblical political proportions, supposedly after seeing televised images of Syrian kids suffering in the aftermath of a gas attack.

I resisted an urge to state the obvious: Trump, who is self-evidently a world class narcissist and incapable of feeling empathy, used dead children to justify a missile attack that would momentarily deflect attention from the debacle that his presidency has become.

Where was his empathy when rescuers were pulling the bodies of kids from the rubble that remained of Aleppo after his buddy Vladimir Putin sent the Russian bombers to do their murderous work?

He needed a win, and in his demented world of alternative facts, firing missiles at a country that had no missiles to fire back would energize his heavily armed mouth-breathing base. I wanted to put the question to those gun-toting Americans who pride themselves as defenders of freedom: Why is it that the U.S. only utilizes its vaunted military and technological superiority against countries that can’t fight back in kind—Viet Nam, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya?

North Korea, which fought the U.S. to a standstill more than six decades ago, has been starving its own people for years; Pakistan harbored Osama Bin Laden and provides sanctuary for terrorists; China could gas everyone in Tibet and not a single U.S. missile would fly.

Message to Trump: A kid is just as dead if his head is crushed by a chunk of concrete.

Oh yeah, the Russians (who were warned to get out of the way of the Syrian missile strike) can shoot back. Not to mention the golden shower video and reams of documentation Putin is holding onto for just the right moment. Pakistan has nukes.

Let’s face it Trump voters, the U.S. is the equivalent of the classic school yard bully, a country that picked its spots during two world wars and continues to beat up on military weaklings while avoiding the real tough guys.

You have put your country in the hands of an ignorant bully, an authoritarian con man who will do anything to avoid accountability, including firing the director of the FBI while that agency is ramping up an investigation into malfeasance which strikes at the core of your democracy.

The word unprecedented has become a cliché since the Mango Megalomaniac took control.

The list of firsts includes dropping the largest bomb ever to be exploded on the planet. It is the only time in your history that a president has fired an FBI director who is investigating people close to the Presidency.

Can the world’s first strategic nuclear strike be far behind?

The list grows longer and the world more dangerous as you sit back smugly on your oversized arses watching sports and reality TV as the systems and institutions you so revere are being dismantled, never missing an opportunity to tell the rest of us that you are the greatest country in the world and that God is on your side.

You listen with docility as your President bullies and denigrates longtime allies under the guise of putting American interests first. News flash: Anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of history knows Americans have always put their own interests first.

You allow your elected representatives to roll out flimsy excuses for inexcusable behaviour as they pay homage to a sick leader while stripping your family of health care. Your hallowed democracy teeters on the brink, while partisan politicians put party loyalty ahead of country.

You have been duped and like most victims of a con are too embarrassed to admit the truth. The only question that remains is how many of your precious freedoms are you willing to give up before you stand up for yourselves and start chanting in one powerful voice–Lock him up.